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20 thoughts on “A counter powerpoint”

From my own personal experience of Southern Health, they will be far too busy polishing up that tarnished reputation to even begin to understand any of this sadly. Someone once said this to me, ” you cannot hide the sun, the moon, or the truth.” One day the truth about Southern Health will come out for sure. Stay strong.

I don’t understand why they continue to be so poor at trying to make this as painless as possible. In circumstances such as these, isn’t it obvious that should be your primary aim? I keep thinking about that PowerPoint and trying to understand the person (or persons) who wrote it, delivered it and made it publicly available on the internet. Were they simply just stupid? The content suggests they are. But I think that might be too dismissive an answer. The management speak and the “Monitoring & Evaluation” tone is indicative of a culture of blame (but not responsibility) that pervades so many public and third sector organisations.

So many people have been indoctrinated into thinking and behaving in a way that is about metrics, outcomes, indicators and just quantifying work that is supposed to be public service. When every aspect of health and social care is reduced to component parts and anyone with a modicum of responsibility is trained to just focus on those components, then PowerPoints like this are the result. And the effect is compounded by the type of person who does well in this environment. Those who do not (or cannot) critically appraise this culture of reductionism are the ones who are promoted. The less you think about anything other than the required parameters the better you do. The people who put this training together would not have spent a single moment contemplating its impact on you and your family. It simply wouldn’t have occurred to them that it was inappropriate in any way.

Hi, I just wanted to say your comment and general summing up of this dreadful situation with Sara and her family and Southern Health is so accurate. I too have had many dealings with them over 13 years of complaints because of a bad attitude and constant poor practice. Although I cannot, and would not ever compare my experiences to Sara`s & certain other families, I can however confirm this style of incompetence is standard. Taking a long time to reply to justified complaints about a vulnerable family member, then twisting & turning the facts with oh so carefully scripted answers to make you feel like you are the one with the problem is/ has been the norm so far for me.
Example: When I complained recently that in their supported living ( my son receives ) that they had not been following the Care Standards Act (Domiciliary Care Minimum Standards). I actually had a senior member of staff say 2 things that alarmed me.
1. Perhaps you did not ask for them to be followed.?!
2. Which standards do you mean, there are so many versions.?!
Coupled with them openly ignoring the Mental Capacity Act since 2005, and not being concerned enough to show accountability on any level by protecting ignorant staff attitudes throughout, its a disaster.
With answers like that even in my less serious case its pretty disgusting, and shows no hope or chance of improvement any time soon. So how come with all this evidence combined someone in authority is still allowing this particular set of people to have licence to practice.?

I think either the authorities approve (tacitly) or they know and understand that the only people willing to become managers in this culture of blame are those willing to work in this way. Someone willing to brush off complaints about minimum standards is also the type of person able to finagle the figures so that the metrics come out in the organisation’s favour.

Another issue is how hard it is to fire people who are incompetent. I worked in the private sector for 7 years before joining the public sector 12 years ago. It’s just as hard to let someone go in a private corporation. You still have to “performance manage” and go through difficult steps to prove someone is bad at their job. It’s a lot of effort to get rid of someone who understands how to “meet objectives” but not how to do their job properly. You send them on training courses to improve and all it does is train them how to document their “improvement”.

In the private sector these people are often just bought out. They’re offered three months or six months salary, a good reference and told “thank you, but no thank you” and by and large people take it. In the public/third sector this isn’t an option; the choices are 1) promote them into a meaningless post and then make that post redundant 2) keep down the performance management/disciplinary track until they resign or go on stress-induced long term sick-leave or launch a grievance 3) accept the minimal improvements you do see and work around their incompetence. (I should add that a lot of the time the grievances are legitimate because the person undertaking the disciplinary procedure is usually part of this culture of blame and ends up hiding behind metrics themselves and bullying the incompetent staff member).

For me the solutions to this are around honesty, courage and integrity. People need to be honest about their practice and have the courage to admit when things go wrong. This can only happen in a culture that is cohesive, with shared responsibility among all staff who are committed to providing the best possible service, not the best possible evaluation scores.

Sara
I have been off line for a few days and to return to this is so shocking and unbelievable.
It is difficult to understand who decided at Southern Health that this was acceptable. It is completely wrong on all sorts of levels. They have no shame, they have previously agreed that it was preventable but then try and “spin” what they did well to the CQC.
Quite incredible that they believe that they did anything well given the dreadful circumstances.
I am so sorry that Southern Health keeping on doing things that are so hurtful and insensitive to you and your family.
It seems that the £900,000 they spent on leadership training in the last year has been a complete waste of taxpayer’s money if this latest development is anything to go by.
Perhaps some people in authority are noting the completely unacceptable ongoing behaviour of the Trust towards you and your family.
Regards

Sara I don’t think I like your slideshow. You are the academic and I am most certainly not but I have a horror that the Trust would view your imagery as positive engagement with future development of the customer journey and a coming together of ideas,moving forward. The invitation might not be in the post yet but it will come. The focus for the Trust should be the never event. Tailored responses and displays of empathy towards grieving relatives get them off the hook time and time again . They know the ropes , I think the appalling powerpoint was an invitation to you to dance with the devil.

Think I get where Nic is coming from on this, and given the continual and repeated evidence of the disconnect between the Sloves and your reality, I’m sure it’s a risk….that said, you were offering similar advice back in February, something that they appear to have used as an anti-script for how to behave https://mydaftlife.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/imagine/ I don’t think they are half as clever as we may think, too wrapped in their own reputation to engage with you, your loss or what their learning should be.

I am not sure that “displaying” empathy while very clearly not feeling it will fool anyone, but given the power imbalance, yeah, they might not care if it looks/sounds good enough to fool those with the money who appear quite happy to take the word for the deed. It isn;t really about reputation, is it? It is about what can seem convincing if you don;t look too close or know what is really going on.

My daughter had a new support worker this week. Impressive, dynamic, on the management track. Not too interested in my views. My daughter’s response? “She doesn’t look at me.” Maybe she has read powerpoints instead?

It’s not just southern cross. My son was in the cygnet group, private, supposedly autism specialists,no way. We had to get him out before they wrecked him. Scary thing is we are seeing newly built 100 bedded ‘hospitals’ been built across the uk, in wales, blackpool , Northampton etc. the government promised a move away from this model of care. It’s four years since my son was freed from greedy private care sector who saw my son as a commodity and left my son unsafe amongst staff who were not sincere